Frogfoot:The theory is that the Higgs particle gives things mass. If (big if) we can learn to manipulate the Higgs then we might be able to manipulate the mass of objects.e.g. Need to move something? Get Higgs cancelers and move whatever you want easily. Need that oil tanker out of the gulf before it spills everything? Use your Higgs cancelers and away it goes, off to dry dock for repair and crude oil transfer.

You're thinking small. If you can "cancel" mass, luminal speeds should be possible, aka "lightspeed".

Unlike many internet armchair physicists.....I don't even pretend to be able fathom why the fark the particle is so important, let alone what it is. I just like it because ignorant Christian "scientists" get their panties in a bunch over it.

Without the Higgs boson, matter would not have mass and there would be no gravity in the universe. It is an important discovery, since it pulls together much of what we understands about the physicality of the universe and proves what has been theoretical.

the idea behind the higgs boson is quite wrong, but a very good effort considering our limited understanding of the universe. this moment will be looked back upon the first piece of evidence in a long string that proves that we exist in a multi-verse and that it is indeed possible to travel from dimension to dimension. have fun finding out the rest, it will change everything we think we know about physics.

Kibbler:I just had a thought occur to me. Creating Higgs Boson particles is probably kind of like sending a warp-infinity telegram out to the geek who built the universe as a science project. He's been off doing other stuff but once we create these critters, he hears a "You've Got Mail!" ding, says, "Hmm" to himself, opens it up, and his eyes light up. "Joy!" Then he hits Forward:

"Dear Vogons,

Please proceed immediately to Earth."

heh. But the Higgs (or whatever this resonance seen at the LHC is) must be created all the time in the universe. There are protons flying through space with energies a whole lot higher than that of the LHC beams.... These Higgs things then live for a very short time and decay into two gammas, or two Z's, or whatever, which then fly off into space and no one is the wiser... This is just the first time we've managed to create some inside a detector capable of measuring these decay products, which allowed us to infer there was a boson that produced those decay particles.... cheers

Frogfoot:The theory is that the Higgs particle gives things mass. If (big if) we can learn to manipulate the Higgs then we might be able to manipulate the mass of objects.e.g. Need to move something? Get Higgs cancelers and move whatever you want easily. Need that oil tanker out of the gulf before it spills everything? Use your Higgs cancelers and away it goes, off to dry dock for repair and crude oil transfer.

I dunno, I envision the Higgs canceler to be used for something more like this:

Kibbler:I just had a thought occur to me. Creating Higgs Boson particles is probably kind of like sending a warp-infinity telegram out to the geek who built the universe as a science project. He's been off doing other stuff but once we create these critters, he hears a "You've Got Mail!" ding, says, "Hmm" to himself, opens it up, and his eyes light up. "Joy!" Then he hits Forward:

"Dear Vogons,

Please proceed immediately to Earth."

yes, it's kind of like that. once we discover that last piece of information that explains how the universe works, it's like hitting a reset button and it starts all over. being oblivious has its perks.

Dr. Whoof:Frogfoot: The theory is that the Higgs particle gives things mass. If (big if) we can learn to manipulate the Higgs then we might be able to manipulate the mass of objects.e.g. Need to move something? Get Higgs cancelers and move whatever you want easily. Need that oil tanker out of the gulf before it spills everything? Use your Higgs cancelers and away it goes, off to dry dock for repair and crude oil transfer.

You're thinking small. If you can "cancel" mass, luminal speeds should be possible, aka "lightspeed".

maachubo:Dr. Whoof: Frogfoot: The theory is that the Higgs particle gives things mass. If (big if) we can learn to manipulate the Higgs then we might be able to manipulate the mass of objects.e.g. Need to move something? Get Higgs cancelers and move whatever you want easily. Need that oil tanker out of the gulf before it spills everything? Use your Higgs cancelers and away it goes, off to dry dock for repair and crude oil transfer.

You're thinking small. If you can "cancel" mass, luminal speeds should be possible, aka "lightspeed".

wjllope:Kibbler: I just had a thought occur to me. Creating Higgs Boson particles is probably kind of like sending a warp-infinity telegram out to the geek who built the universe as a science project. He's been off doing other stuff but once we create these critters, he hears a "You've Got Mail!" ding, says, "Hmm" to himself, opens it up, and his eyes light up. "Joy!" Then he hits Forward:

"Dear Vogons,

Please proceed immediately to Earth."

heh. But the Higgs (or whatever this resonance seen at the LHC is) must be created all the time in the universe. There are protons flying through space with energies a whole lot higher than that of the LHC beams.... These Higgs things then live for a very short time and decay into two gammas, or two Z's, or whatever, which then fly off into space and no one is the wiser... This is just the first time we've managed to create some inside a detector capable of measuring these decay products, which allowed us to infer there was a boson that produced those decay particles.... cheers

"Attention Earth, this is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. Before proceeding to other matters, I direct you to submit one wjllope for immediate rehabilitation. Section 3, Article 4 of the Vogon Criminal Code clearly prohibits interfering with the plot lines of potential future scifi novels. The Vogon Secret Service will not protect you. We do this shiat all the time."

we are trying to figure out where the person throwing the darts was aiming. The target is no longer available, but we can see where the darts landed.

if we assume just one location for a target -- we come up with the black cross.

but if we examine the location of all darts -- it looks like there were actually two locations (blue and red crosses).

that seems to be the best fit -- although as wjllope said with his 2.5 sigma comment: there haven't been enough darts holes seen to really commit to the theory of two target locations.

so crosses are assumed center of a target (or targets) (best fit)the solid lines are the limit of the most likely places targets could have beenthe dotted lines are the limit of less likely, but possible places the targets could have been.

----------------------------------------------

as an aside: instead of dart locations thrown at a board, what we are talking about is the mass of a particle -- we assume a particle has ONE exact mass -- any time we see something with that mass and some other features we say "aha -- that's this one particle" -- but it seems this higgs boson has two masses

although it seems the features are slightly different so I don't understand why we aren't calling this two different particles instead of one.

maachubo:Dr. Whoof: Frogfoot: The theory is that the Higgs particle gives things mass. If (big if) we can learn to manipulate the Higgs then we might be able to manipulate the mass of objects.e.g. Need to move something? Get Higgs cancelers and move whatever you want easily. Need that oil tanker out of the gulf before it spills everything? Use your Higgs cancelers and away it goes, off to dry dock for repair and crude oil transfer.

You're thinking small. If you can "cancel" mass, luminal speeds should be possible, aka "lightspeed".

And the scientists still won't get laid for this discovery.

Won't they?

Meh, Liara is a xeno-anthropologist, not a quantum physicist. And Shepard isn't a scientist at all (unless you could make the argument he's a "military scientist"). Does Chief Engineer Adams ever get laid? No. Not until Bioware releases the "Have Sex With the Whole Crew" DLC.

Dr. Whoof:maachubo: Dr. Whoof: Frogfoot: The theory is that the Higgs particle gives things mass. If (big if) we can learn to manipulate the Higgs then we might be able to manipulate the mass of objects.e.g. Need to move something? Get Higgs cancelers and move whatever you want easily. Need that oil tanker out of the gulf before it spills everything? Use your Higgs cancelers and away it goes, off to dry dock for repair and crude oil transfer.

You're thinking small. If you can "cancel" mass, luminal speeds should be possible, aka "lightspeed".

And the scientists still won't get laid for this discovery.

Won't they?

Meh, Liara is a xeno-anthropologist, not a quantum physicist. And Shepard isn't a scientist at all (unless you could make the argument he's a "military scientist"). Does Chief Engineer Adams ever get laid? No. Not until Bioware releases the "Have Sex With the Whole Crew" DLC.

Good point. But you can get with Tali'Zorah, and she's an engineer.

But I guess even engineer still isn't scientist. So that leaves Mordin, and nobody wants to fark a salarian.

Dr. Whoof:maachubo: Dr. Whoof: Frogfoot: The theory is that the Higgs particle gives things mass. If (big if) we can learn to manipulate the Higgs then we might be able to manipulate the mass of objects.e.g. Need to move something? Get Higgs cancelers and move whatever you want easily. Need that oil tanker out of the gulf before it spills everything? Use your Higgs cancelers and away it goes, off to dry dock for repair and crude oil transfer.

You're thinking small. If you can "cancel" mass, luminal speeds should be possible, aka "lightspeed".

And the scientists still won't get laid for this discovery.

Won't they?

Meh, Liara is a xeno-anthropologist, not a quantum physicist. And Shepard isn't a scientist at all (unless you could make the argument he's a "military scientist"). Does Chief Engineer Adams ever get laid? No. Not until Bioware releases the "Have Sex With the Whole Crew" DLC.

A Higgs bosun walks into a church. The priest says, "We don't allow your kind in here." The Higgs bosun says, "What do you mean? You can't have mass without me."

* * * * *

Heisenberg gets pulled over for speeding. The cop says, "Do you know how fast you were going?" Heisenberg replies, "No. But I can tell you where I am."

* * * * *

Einstein, Newton, and Pascal decide to play hide and seek. Einstein closes his eyes and counts. Pascal runs to hide, but Newton simply pulls a piece of chalk from his pocket and draws a square around himself. Einstein opens his eyes, sees Newton, and grabs him. "I caught you," Einstein says. "No," replies Newton. "You found one Newton per square meter. You found Pascal."

JackieRabbit:Without the Higgs boson, matter would not have mass and there would be no gravity in the universe.

I am not a physicist, and this maybe be nonsense, but ... I thought the theory with the Higgs uses special relativity, not general relativity, and so we're talking about inertial mass, not gravitational mass. That is, the interaction with the Higgs explains why particles with mass (like electrons) travel at less than the speed of light, and you need to put in energy to make them go faster, but it does not explain why there is a very weak gravitational attraction between particles with mass. (Though, presumably, a desire to figure out how quantum mechanics and general relativity fit together is one of the reasons why experimental data about thrthe Higgs is interesting).

SusanY:JackieRabbit: Without the Higgs boson, matter would not have mass and there would be no gravity in the universe.

I am not a physicist, and this maybe be nonsense, but ... I thought the theory with the Higgs uses special relativity, not general relativity, and so we're talking about inertial mass, not gravitational mass. That is, the interaction with the Higgs explains why particles with mass (like electrons) travel at less than the speed of light, and you need to put in energy to make them go faster, but it does not explain why there is a very weak gravitational attraction between particles with mass. (Though, presumably, a desire to figure out how quantum mechanics and general relativity fit together is one of the reasons why experimental data about thrthe Higgs is interesting).

Hm. So while a Higgs field canceler would not be anti-gravity, we'd still have intertialess drive, a la Lensman? I'm OK with this.

SusanY:JackieRabbit: Without the Higgs boson, matter would not have mass and there would be no gravity in the universe.

I am not a physicist, and this maybe be nonsense, but ... I thought the theory with the Higgs uses special relativity, not general relativity, and so we're talking about inertial mass, not gravitational mass. That is, the interaction with the Higgs explains why particles with mass (like electrons) travel at less than the speed of light, and you need to put in energy to make them go faster, but it does not explain why there is a very weak gravitational attraction between particles with mass. (Though, presumably, a desire to figure out how quantum mechanics and general relativity fit together is one of the reasons why experimental data about thrthe Higgs is interesting).

Special relativity and General relativity are the same theory. Special relativity is merely a special case of general relativity (i.e. general relativity in the special case of no acceleration).

There isn't any different between inertial mass and gravitational mass in either theory.

Kibbler:I just had a thought occur to me. Creating Higgs Boson particles is probably kind of like sending a warp-infinity telegram out to the geek who built the universe as a science project. He's been off doing other stuff but once we create these critters, he hears a "You've Got Mail!" ding, says, "Hmm" to himself, opens it up, and his eyes light up. "Joy!" Then he hits Forward:

"Dear Vogons,

Please proceed immediately to Earth."

You can make a reasonable decent argument that Revelations predicts that as soon as humans learn to manipulate mass and time at the particle level, we immediately try to verify the Book of Revelations and rip a warmhole into our own past, and destroy the Earth.